I'd like to discuss fire and electricity (or if you prefer, lightning) in D3. Poison and Cold both have purpose, effects that are useful. But fire and electricity are both sub-par when compared.

In D2, fire was useless. Everything was immune to in on Hell difficulty, and it didn't have the highest damage threshold of the 4 elements anyway. It had no added bonuses like damage over time or slowing effects. It didn't spread. It's only useful attribute was its ability to stay around in an area for a short time with some spells, like Meteor or Firewall.

In D2, I personally hated lightning. It had the widest range of damage possible, and highest maximum, but I always seemed to hit on the low end with any spells. It's only advantage was that there were few monsters immune to it. Basically, I found it useless, especially compared to cold spells which had more certain damage, many had AoE, and could slow/freeze. Now, in D3, electricity has been made even more like cold spells, with the ability to stun as well. Why would we need two elements who act almost the same?

This thread is for ideas to improve fire and lightning in D3. Either skills or the effect of element bonuses to weapons. It can also be to discuss the addition of a new element, the wizard's Arcane magic, and what kinds of effects it should have to really make it a separate, useful element.

Actually in D2 Fire was the highest damaging element, with a Meteor/Fireball build you could spit out upwards of 8k fireballs very fast (depending on FCR) and bomb enemies with like 20k+ meteors.

Firewall sort of tanked in 1.10 -- only good it you had aton of +skills plus like a conviction merc or something.

Lightning was less useless, imo, but mana intensive, and required some EXTREME equipment. The range of damage was annoying, I agree, but Chain Lightning could be so useful. Plus if you've invested in that tree you could turn the sorc into an ES build since you'll have a ton of +skills to that tree anyway.

Fire would be cool if it including an element of burning towards it (Sort of like Rain of Fire in War3). Lightning was alright, imo, but some of the best passive-type skills were located in that tree (Teleport, ES, even Static) so it wasn't totally useless =D. I always thought it would be cool if a player could be "Lightning Enchanted" like a monster so that every hit made you spark, heh.

However I really don't want to see too many repeats. I think it would be folly to not include like a Frozen Orb or something like Meteor since they are so iconic to the Sorc class, but to much repeat... I dunno.

Arcane, and correct me if I'm wrong, seems like it might be more in tune with something like a Necro's Bone tree (eg: pure magical damage minus an element affiliation), so I dunno.

I'd love to see Enchant make a return in some form (even if you can enchant in different elements or something cool), because that was such an itneresting skill and helped to create some the most interesting character builds imo.

-Fire could have a chance of causing an effect called ( meltdown ) which is basically reducing the armor or defense of the mosnters temp with a certain percentage depending on the lv. of spell or fire dmg ( like a weapon that does 20 fire dmg does 20% meltdown ), thus making the next few attacks do more damage than usual.

-Lightning could have an effect called ( charge ), which is basically charging the monster with electricity with every hit then when it dies it releases elcitric charges that strike nearby units, and again damage and duration are dependant on spell lv. or lightnning dmg done by weapon, that's aside from the stun effect that slows the monsters down a little ( making them more likely to group up thus making charge more effective )

There are differences between stunning and freezing, and big differences between stunning and chilling; and if there are immunities in this game you will need multiple "annoyance" skills to draw from to do crowd control

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I'd like to discuss fire and electricity (or if you prefer, lightning) in D3. Poison and Cold both have purpose, effects that are useful. But fire and electricity are both sub-par when compared.

In D2, fire was useless. Everything was immune to in on Hell difficulty, and it didn't have the highest damage threshold of the 4 elements anyway. It had no added bonuses like damage over time or slowing effects. It didn't spread. It's only useful attribute was its ability to stay around in an area for a short time with some spells, like Meteor or Firewall.

In D2, I personally hated lightning. It had the widest range of damage possible, and highest maximum, but I always seemed to hit on the low end with any spells. It's only advantage was that there were few monsters immune to it. Basically, I found it useless, especially compared to cold spells which had more certain damage, many had AoE, and could slow/freeze. Now, in D3, electricity has been made even more like cold spells, with the ability to stun as well. Why would we need two elements who act almost the same?

This thread is for ideas to improve fire and lightning in D3. Either skills or the effect of element bonuses to weapons. It can also be to discuss the addition of a new element, the wizard's Arcane magic, and what kinds of effects it should have to really make it a separate, useful element.

Fire had the highest consistent damage in D2.
Fire wasnt useless in D2. In terms of dueling, with high enough FCR and the right equipment it was insanely good. When it comes to PvE, it is true, there were a lot of Fire immunities late in the game. This could easily be remedied with a Meteo/Orb build. You sacrafice points in Cold Mastery for the Fire skills. Since CM acted on enemies resistances instead of damage, it wasnt that big of a deal.Cold was middle of the road but slowed enemies down.
I always thought Cold sorcs were boring. Orb Sorcs were terrible because of the delay placed on Orb in 1.10. Blizz Sorcs were nice, but once again, incredibly boring. All of the other skills kind of paled in comparison to there fire counterparts. The ability to slow kind of got negated when you could have a Merc with Holy Freeze. Dueling with Cold Sorcs was decent.Lightning had the highest threshold but it was always 1-whatever.
Lightning on the other hand was my bread and butter. I kind of resent your comments about it, but maybe you were the unluckiest D2 player ever when it came to damage. Lightning Sorcs were insane in terms of damage and surviveability. I always played HC (The only way to play). A lot of people say it was a mana intensive build, and it was, but if built correctly you could dominate easily. Poison sucked.

I might be biased since I play HC, or because when I think of a character I always think of it with the perfect stat placement and the best possible gear. I built character for 80 and up. It sounds like you might have been thinking of lower levels.

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My best character was a poison Necro...
I killed anything with Poison Nova and if it was sufficiently immune or resistant Bone Spear or Bone Spirit worked fairly well (Spear for mobs, Spirit for bosses/specials/pvp)

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My best character was a poison Necro...
I killed anything with Poison Nova and if it was sufficiently immune or resistant Bone Spear or Bone Spirit worked fairly well (Spear for mobs, Spirit for bosses/specials/pvp)

I cant see having a working Spirit/Poison Necro. Both of those tree were pretty skill point intensive. You really had to max out either one for it be really effective. I may have been hasty to declare poison shitty, it was fixed somewhat in 1.11. Poison/Skele Necros could solo all of Hell. In terms of speed they werent terribly great, but there survivability was through the roof.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eli

Poison with the fire golem and an aura merc. Get the aura runewords and beast it up with pulses after you reduce everything to one HP.

They never really got around to fixing Golems. I always thought 20 in Raise Skeleton and 1 in Mastery was better than maxing a Golem. With +Skills this made your Skeles great for tanking. 15 Shields is better than 1. The damage on both is shitty ragardless. Skelemancers are viable, but you would have to sacrafice the Poison points/gear/merc to make this work.

Last edited by Reflection; 11-06-2008 at 12:55 AM.

I have come curiously close to the end, thoughBeneath my self indulgent pitiful hole. Defeated IConcede and move closer. I may find comfort hereI may find peace within the emptiness. How pitiful.It's calling me...

-Fire could have a chance of causing an effect called ( meltdown ) which is basically reducing the armor or defense of the mosnters temp with a certain percentage depending on the lv. of spell or fire dmg ( like a weapon that does 20 fire dmg does 20% meltdown ), thus making the next few attacks do more damage than usual.

-Lightning could have an effect called ( charge ), which is basically charging the monster with electricity with every hit then when it dies it releases elcitric charges that strike nearby units, and again damage and duration are dependant on spell lv. or lightnning dmg done by weapon, that's aside from the stun effect that slows the monsters down a little ( making them more likely to group up thus making charge more effective )

I like the lighting idea Wolf- Pumping enemies with enough energy to cause a certain electric/lighting level nova with potential stunning effects and certainly damaging nearby opponents.
With Fire, I agree with Squidly-lemar that fire became one of those...well what have you done for me lately spells- Of course, if you put a lot of points into certain fire spells, they would be heavy hitting; but if an entire segment of the game bases an element completely useless, well...what if that is what your character is based on? The Meltdown idea is a nuance that needs to be looked into. So damage by fire would be based upon how long the enemy stands in the fire, or is on fire and the level of spell it came from. This would also play into the armor being damaged; but in my opinion, the damage should not be permanent/long lasting after the battle. Sure, your defense will be lowered for a duration of some magnitude, but after that the AP should be brought back to its original state, minus any normal damage that the armor will aquire.
I think the ice spells are the best in my opinion, keeping enemies slowing down to a crawl and shattering them is a huge key to ice spells and should not overlap with lighting at all. Where as lighting will stop them cold while they buzz around; the ice should just make them slower and extremely weak. I dunno what else to say

I cant see having a working Spirit/Poison Necro. Both of those tree were pretty skill point intensive. You really had to max out either one for it be really effective. I may have been hasty to declare poison shitty, it was fixed somewhat in 1.11. Poison/Skele Necros could solo all of Hell. In terms of speed they werent terribly great, but there survivability was through the roof.

They never really got around to fixing Golems. I always thought 20 in Raise Skeleton and 1 in Mastery was better than maxing a Golem. With +Skills this made your Skeles great for tanking. 15 Shields is better than 1. The damage on both is shitty ragardless. Skelemancers are viable, but you would have to sacrafice the Poison points/gear/merc to make this work.

Fire golems have a pulsing fire aura- after your nova takes them down to 1 hp, either that aura or your mercenary's gets them.